65DN meets the owners of the Oulu Indian restaurant which advertises solely by word of mouth.

‘Indian Cuisine’, situated opposite Oulu Railway Station, doesn’t take out advertisements in the newspapers.

‘We don’t do any advertising,’ smiles Nusrat Mallick, the restaurant’s owner. ‘Most of the time we get customers and they tell other people about the restaurant and so we get more customers.’

‘It all depends on people,’ she explains. ‘I’m a positive person and people have given me a lot of support in Oulu,’ the 28 year-old laughs. Nusrat laughs a lot. She may well be one of Oulu’s bubbliest restauranteers.

Originally from Dhaka in Bangladesh, Nusrat arrived in Oulu as a nine year-old in 1992, adopted into her brother’s family. She remembers how much she preferred school in Finland to Bangladesh.

‘In Finland, you didn’t have to respect the teacher or anything!’ she laughs. ‘As long as you do your homework then that makes you a good a student!’

So immersed was Nusrat in Finnish that her native language changed to Finnish. ‘Friends of mine ask me, “So, what language do you think in?” and I say, “Well, Finnish”!’ she chuckles.

After leaving school, Nusrat became a waitress at a hotel and then in a Chinese restaurant run by an ethnically Chinese lady who had been raised in Calcutta, meaning that both she and Nusrat spoke in Bengali.

In 2007, her Chinese-Indian former-boss asked Nusrat if she would like to go into business with her, jointly running the Royal Garden Restaurant which would be Chinese on one side and Indian on the other. Recently, ‘Indian Cuisine’ and the Chinese ‘Royal Garden’ have become separate businesses with Nusrat and her husband the sole owners of ‘Indian Cuisine.’

Nusrat has had to adapt the food to the Finnish tastes, but only slightly. ‘We make it a little bit less spicy. However, most of our regular customers like it quite spicy. The recipes are from northern India which is not as spicy as in the south.’

And with increasing numbers of Indians in Helsinki, Nusrat doesn’t need to import any of the ingredients. ‘We try to make what our customers like,’ she says. ‘If there’s something special you want that’s not on the menu, then call us!’ The restaurant also provides a takeaway service on request. One of Nusrat’s customers, a retiring university lecturer, even booked out the restaurant for a private party.

Ari Mallick, 31, sits next to his wife, quietly. ‘She’s the more important one to interview,’ he demurs. Originally from Calcutta, Ari arrived in Oulu in 2005, taking up work as an engineer. He met Nusrat as a customer at her restaurant and they got married last year.

Nusrat is a Muslim ‘but I am so-called Hindu,’ Ari says, thoughtfully. ‘In India they would say that our marriage is controversial. There many Muslims in India but there is very little mixing between Muslims and Hindus.’

Ari has taken over the business side of things, allowing Nusrat to concentrate on being a maitre d’. Newer to the country, Ari is more attuned to cultural differences between Finland other countries in which he has worked, such as the UK.

‘In other countries, if you meet a friend in the street and you’re with another friend and he doesn’t know the person you meet then you introduce them,’ he explains. ‘It’s considered polite. But in Finland you don’t do that. And after a while here, you start to think, “Yeah, maybe they’re right. Why should you do that!”’

For Ari, there are clear differences between their restaurant and its main competitors. ‘We have a very different business model,’ he says.

‘In terms of the amount of customers and price, then, for sure, our competitor is winning. In a recession, you can increase the price, decrease the portions or decrease the quality. We have maybe put the price up a little bit but we have kept the quality high and I think our customers appreciate that.’

‘Our model is not to advertise but to invest in quality so that customers come back again and again and they tell their friends about the restaurant. We have more regular customers than our competitor and our customers spend more. People maybe think our restaurant is more expensive, but it is a good price for that quality.’

One of Nusrat and Ari’ s main expenses is chefs. ‘If I could, I would employ all local staff,’ stresses Ari, as their Finnish waitress walks past carrying bowls of curry. ‘But there are no chefs here trained in cooking Indian food, so we have to get them in from India.’

‘This means it’s a permanent contract,’ interjects Nusrat. ‘I have to give them a flat and even a car. Of course, it would be cheaper if we could employ local chefs and even ring people up for extra help when we are very busy.’

We tour the kitchen and one of the chefs makes a naan bread. He doesn’t seem to speak Finnish or English yet. ‘We communicate in Hindi,’ smiles Ari. The chef slaps together the naan over a 450 degree oven.

‘We cook Indian food in Indian style!’ Ari points out.

Soon, Nusrat intends to overhaul her menu and bring in all kinds of new dishes. ‘I like to change it, try new things out . . . see if people like them!’ she laughs. But this will also be through word of mouth. ‘We don’t do flashy advertisements,’ emphasises Ari again. ‘We use that same money to invest in ingredients and in the restaurant.’